It is critical that ambulances, fire trucks, police cars, and other emergency vehicles be able to navigate quickly and safely to emergency locations in order to provide life-saving services. Such emergency vehicles oftentimes encounter heavy traffic areas and challenging road conditions, particularly in metropolitan areas. For example, ambulances must often weave between cars to get to a particular location.
Drivers of non-emergency vehicles currently move to the side of the road only after seeing emergency vehicle lights or hearing emergency vehicle sirens. In other words, drivers respond to emergency vehicles in a very reactionary way and not in a coordinated or premeditated manner. However, lights and sirens are rarely noticed when an emergency vehicle is a significant enough distance away from the vehicles to provide the vehicles sufficient time to efficiently pave a lane for the emergency vehicle. Instead, the lights and sirens are typically noticed only a few hundred feet away from the vehicles and, if the emergency vehicle is approaching an intersection from a crossroad, a much shorter distance or not at all. As such, emergency vehicles may spend a significant amount of time simply waiting for non-emergency vehicles to move before proceeding to the emergency location.